Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)

What a gorgeous movie.
I know it was all CGI, and theoretically they could make it look any way they want, but the team that focused on colors and gradients and contrasts and all that other jazz turned it up to 11.
This was an absolute treat to watch. Sunsets, crepuscular rays, fog clouds, glowing objects, you name it – the lighting work in this movie was truly outstanding, and I’d love to keep raving about it, but I’ll just get repetitive, so go with the takeaway that the visuals are drop-dead gorgeous and it tops anything I’ve seen in any other full-CGI flick.

Disney also nailed the facial micro-expressions. There were scenes where the tiniest eyebrow raises or nervous lip-bites changed the way the characters’ emotions were displayed, but it wasn’t until moments after that I realized what had just worked so well. The camera wasn’t focusing on those emotions – the production team wasn’t trying to highlight the movements – they were just there, natural, the way you or I would do it. It was such a small thing with a wild impact to the amount I could relate to any given character.

I should probably talk about the movie though:

“Raya and the Last Dragon” (2021) was about a fantasy land called ‘Kumandra’ – a collection of nation-states that existed around a giant dragon-shaped lake, and sort of-protected by a family of dragons who each seemed to have one vague-yet-important effects on nature. For example: It was unclear if the dragon with rain powers could control the weather that was already happening, or if they were required for rain to occur.
Regardless: the dragons had all disappeared approximately 500 years prior with the arrival of the Druun – evil purple smoke monsters that turned people to stone – and all that remained was a special orb that did something even more vague than whatever the dragons themselves were doing.
Based on what piece of land each nation owned around the dragon lake determined what they’d dubbed themselves, so the nations were Heart, Fang, Spine, Tail and Talon – all of whom were conveniently color-coded by their outfits, which gave it a distinct YA vibe – specifically “Divergent” (2014).
In the ‘present’ time, the five nation-states had all turned belligerent towards each other; in an attempt at finding peace and a common ground, Chief Benja (Daniel Dae Kim) of Heart invited the leaders from each nation to a massive dinner party. Unsurprisingly, everyone else assumed it was a trick and behaved as inappropriately as you’d expect, ultimately breaking and stealing the dragon orb that Heart had been protecting for the last half-millennia.

Chief Benja’s point in hosting the event was that the world was broken not because of a lack of dragons, but because of a lack of trust.
Don’t worry if you don’t catch it the first time – they’ll repeat the concept about a thousand times. It felt like every tenth the word in the script was “trust.”

Raya (Kelly Marie Tran), daughter of Chief Benja, was ultimately the reason the dragon orb was lost, and reasonably blamed herself, so she made it her life-goal to collect the pieces again and find the last dragon that was supposedly still out there somewhere.
Once found, the dragon Sisu (Awkwafina), described herself as “that one person in the group project who doesn’t do much but gets full credit anyway,” which was entertaining, but implied she was a slacker who just happened to get historical credit for saving the world 500 years ago. However, she consistently proved herself to be enthusiastically intent in doing her part to save the world again. Wildly misguided and often wrong, but certainly not for lack of trying.

So Raya and Sisu took to adventuring across the rest of Kumandra, where they met and were joined by a colorful cast of characters like Tong (Benedict Wong), Little Noi (Thalia Tran), and Boun (Izaac Wang), all from different nations, none of whom did anything to help actually Raya at any given time, except to prove that those of other nations weren’t blood-thirsty hate-mongers or whatever. You know, to build trust.

Disney has been historically criticized for picking white people to voice a diverse cast of characters in animated movies. This time, the entire cast was of various Asian descent, which was pretty cool, as this story was obviously and thoroughly influenced by various tales and legends from that region of the world. I didn’t see any one specific lore shine through harder than any other, but I’ve also got almost zero knowledge of the legends of those peoples either, though I can definitely say there didn’t seem to be a heavy Chinese influence.
The only character in this movie who wasn’t voiced by an Asian person was Tuk Tuk – Raya’s giant pet “fur bug” (pill bug + hamster) that fit the “creature that is not a dog but behaves like a dog” trope that every animal in an animated film fits, voiced by Alan Tudyk. I don’t know what he got out of recording a dozen grunts into a microphone, but I’m sure he had fun doing it.

The music was good enough for the scenes we were watching, but nothing was stand-out enough for me to want to listen again.

The visuals – again – were absolutely top-notch. Disney animation has absolutely caught up to Pixar in terms of what they can render.

I don’t know how major studios are handling their finances during this pandemic, as they can’t wring every dollar out of shuttered movie theaters and online piracy on the rise again because everyone wants their own damn streaming service; only time will tell the long-term impacts of that. But I’m glad I got to see a new movie – I enjoyed the experience.

This movie earned itself a 4-Claw rating – I’m sure it would have been a blast to see in theaters.